


Prepositions

by endemictoearth



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 01:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endemictoearth/pseuds/endemictoearth
Summary: My brief was this: "I would love to see David realising he's pansexual and coming out to his family! Could be canon-compliant (his family already knows when they move to Schitt's Creek) - or an AU of some kind.Contrast this with David's thoughts on Patrick coming to terms with his sexuality. I think David remembers how people treated him in the early days and the bad relationships he was in, and wants to make it so good for Patrick and make sure he's supported in discovering this side of himself. But he's sooo scared of fucking it up.Bonus points for including Alexis and Stevie somehow :)"





	Prepositions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ophelianipples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophelianipples/gifts).



> Many moons ago, I signed up for a fic exchange. And then eleventy billion things happened and when I looked up it was way too late. I offer my sincere apologies for the lateness, and hope that you enjoy this in some fashion! 
> 
> It's ended up a bit fragmented, but I think there's some good bits in here. It's not exactly what you described; however, I hope it will serve in some way. Maybe I'll get half a bonus point for Stevie.
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful @madfatty for her beta skills; this would have been much more shapeless without her guidance!

_ David, before _

 

* * * * *

 

“I mean, obviously, I know this isn’t a date, which is why I’m asking you to come along. It’s, like, a birthday thing. If it weren’t my birthday, he wouldn’t have asked. Obviously.” David shook his head. 

 

Stevie nodded absentmindedly as she scrolled through her twitter feed. 

 

“But, even though it’s not a date and he doesn’t . . . you know . . . I mean, if it comes up . . . do you think I should tell him?” David’s eyebrows reached for his hairline as he waited for Stevie’s reply.

 

She looked up from her phone screen, blinking like she’d just been staring at the sun. “Tell who what?”

 

“Patrick! About me. You KNOW. The . . . wine thing.” 

 

Stevie cut her eyes at him, confused. “The wine thing?”

 

David made an exasperated face. “Red versus white versus rosé . . . you know.”

 

“Oh! I don’t know, David. If you’re thinking about discussing ‘wine’ are you _sure_ you want me to come tonight? Did Patrick actually invite me?” Stevie put her phone face down and hunched over it on the counter to focus on David.

 

“It was a very casual, last-minute, spontaneous idea. I was . . . expounding . . . about my family forgetting my birthday and he just said we should have a dinner to celebrate, like to be nice, or friendly, or . . . whatever. And it’s MY birthday, so I’m inviting you along.” David’s hands lavishly embellished his explanation. 

 

Stevie nodded again, mind now present and accounted for. “Okay, fine, if that’s what you want. But this is my present to you. Showing up to this . . . whatever this is. My presence is my present.”

 

“Duly noted.” David dropped his arms at his sides and stood up straight. “I’ve got to go into the shop. I’m already late back from my break.”

 

“Remind me what time this thing is, again?” Stevie asked, just as David reached the motel door.

 

“He said eight o’clock.” David darted a look over his shoulder, and Stevie narrowed her eyes. 

 

“Eight, eh? What a _friendly_ time to eat dinner with your friends!” She grinned at David mischievously.

 

“And soon-to-be former friends!” David turned on his heel and left, not quite in a huff, but huff-adjacent.

 

*

 

In the end, her swift absence was her present.

 

* * * * *

 

As he walked the short distance to the shop, David wondered why he was even considering laying his predilections on the line. He hadn’t had to explain to anyone what his preferences were for a very long time, until recently when Stevie asked him about his wine selection. It was the perfect metaphor for his pan pitch. But it had been a lifelong journey to fully understand his sexuality, and to understand that his sexuality is a big part of who he is.

 

David simply couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t attracted to all types of human. Would he have been been the same way if he’d grown up in Schitt’s Creek, his dad the motel owner and Moira cutting hair and doing local theater on the weekends? Probably, but italso probably wouldn’t have been as easy. The more he thinks about this, the more layers he peels away, he just can’t decide. Which is very much the point.

 

Growing up, he never expected to have to actually come out; he thought his inclinations were simply telegraphed by his demeanor. Moira was as thrilled as David suspected she’d be, when a lacrosse player was caught sneaking out the french windows of the breakfast room one morning during his senior year. Johnny did the flabbergasted thing he does when something unexpected happened. A lot of loud questions, but most of them would have been the same if it had been a girl from the volleyball team tiptoeing across the terrazzo the morning after. The one that made David pause was, “How long have you known?” 

 

The unspoken part was “that you were gay?” but David knew he wasn’t. It wasn’t as simple as that; nothing in his life ever was. So, he didn’t clarify or correct, he just shrugged and said, “Since . . . forever?” 

 

Johnny was quiet at his response, blinking rapidly as he tried to compute David’s answer. Then he shook his head, picked up his paper, and said, “Well, okay, but no more sleepovers. And no using the Jag for two weeks!” Moira gave David a delighted smirk once Johnny was engrossed in the stock figures and shook her head to indicate the Jag was still available.

 

* * * * *

 

He started off calling himself bisexual, because that was the term of art after the millennium. 

 

David always felt more comfortable with women, how they communicated and shared and showed you what they felt, whether it was good or bad. He could be romantic with women; he loved sending gifts and notes and getting affection in return. But women didn’t always get his sexuality, and a lot of them thought he was just closeted, even in liberal Los Angeles.

 

He tended to be more sexually attracted to masculine energy, but he didn’t always feel emotionally fulfilled in his relationships with men. Guys that wanted to sleep with him didn’t really care about labels, because they didn’t tend to stick around long enough to find out what his were. He’d occasionally make out with women in the corners of parties, but they never asked him home.

 

But he understood, like with anything, if you didn’t keep looking and trying, you’d never find what you were searching for. 

 

David believed he had to keep his options open. What if he missed out on someone because his filters had been set too high? Not standards, because he wasn’t sure what those were. The few times he’d tried online dating, the algorithm tried to weed everyone out. Like, if there were only a handful of people that met your criteria, it somehow meant you were better than everyone else looking for someone to date. But for him, every definitive choice was painful, as it meant he shunted hundreds of prospective partners into a virtual discard pile.

 

And even when he was offline in ‘meatspace’, so many of the people he associated with in the art world had their ironclad ‘preferences’ (“I just prefer guys under 5’6”.” “I just don’t want to date someone younger than me.” “I just don’t think I could relate to anyone who isn’t also white, no offense!”) Which meant they just dated slightly different versions of the same person over and over again. (And in many cases, it meant they dated slightly different version of _themselves_ over and over.)

 

So, when he googled “what do you call it when you can be attracted to anyone?” and after a short scroll found a link to the definition of  pan·sex·u·al (/pan ˈ sekSH(əw)əl/), he started to feel like he’d solved a big piece of his identity.

 

Though, being David, he didn’t feel any wiser or calmer for having figured a piece of himself out. Instead, he sat with the enormity of knowing that it could be ANYONE and how it would be so much easier if he could just click ten buttons on a webpage and have a ‘type’. It also made him feel like if he wasn’t in a relationship for more than a month or two, that it was his fault for not trying hard enough. Sometimes, when the world is your oyster, you get sick of oysters.

 

* * * * *

 

Despite the obvious conflicts of interest, David gave every artist the same sort of chance to win him over that he extended to potential relationships, he was a good gallery owner, despite never being given a level playing field. He knew you never knew where the next great artist would come from, and so he pored over portfolios, taking in each artist’s full body of work. He had good instincts, and the pieces he chose sold. 

 

Of course, they were all bought by Johnny and his businesses, but they would have sold, anyway.

 

When David started out as assistant manager of a tiny gallery in SoHo, Moira went to her husband and said, “Help him, Johnny! Help our boy.” Johnny took that to mean, “Buy everything,” and he instructed his people to make sure they bought everything, without making it too obvious. They took him at his word, and outbid every other buyer. Johnny didn’t know how much they spent, but neither did he care. It was what he could do.

 

The art that David chose and promoted and nurtured, was good. People (people-people, not just Johnny’s people) wanted what he was selling. He had an eye.

 

Seeing was never a problem for David; his problem was being seen. No one looked beneath his surface. Not until Patrick. Moira said it, but David felt it before that. Patrick saw him, for all he was. And he didn’t want to run away.

 

That was the difference. David hadn’t really come out. He was who he was and he was lucky that he rarely had to explain or defend himself. Rather, he’d come through. Through years of wondering if his sexuality was a curse that would leave him wanting everyone, but no one wanting him. 

 

Before he left New York, David fooled himself into thinking he wasn’t really looking for that special someone anymore. That he was fine with the long line of confident artists who slept with him to achieve a measure of fame. But now he was on the other side of that, and he’d found a person who saw in him all the things he saw in the world. As cynical as he claimed to be, as exasperated and annoyed, David could always find beauty and art in the world. And Patrick saw the beauty in him.

 

Faced with the enormity of his choices, he allowed himself to be chosen. 

 

* * * * * 

 

_ Patrick, after _

 

Now that he’s on the other side of it, Patrick doesn’t think he ever really came out. Maybe he . . . unfurled? 

 

He had been within striking distance of everything society and his family every told him he should want. Rachel was cute and sweet and enthusiastic about him in a way he found endearing and confusing. Because he never seemed to feel anything very deeply, he let her energy buoy him along behind her. He’d become a spectator in his own life, smiling in amusement as Rachel made plans for them.

 

They’d had their differences, broken up and gotten back together too many times; partly because Patrick at least felt _something_ for Rachel, more than he had for anyone else romantically. But it was so faint, and so slight, and he tried to make it more than it was. 

 

But all too soon, it felt like it was happening to someone else. Patrick, always a little removed from situations, now had the sense he was watching his life play out on a screen, from another room, in another life. And that’s when he knew he had to get out. 

 

*

 

Patrick loved playing hockey when he was a kid. He played until junior year, when he became too aware of how casual his teammates were in the locker room. When he became flushed and aroused, he figured it was just because that’s what seeing naked bodies did to people. He wasn’t gay; he’d react this way no matter who was naked, wouldn’t he?

 

He knew gay people existed, of course. He believed people should love who they loved. He just never thought he was gay, or that he would love anyone other than a woman. Nothing in his upbringing made it seem like he had any option but to be straight. Maybe he just hadn’t been imaginative enough. 

 

When he left Rachel for the last time, he knew he couldn’t stay where he was. She’d worm her way back into his affections somehow, and then he’d never be able to figure out who he was or what he wanted. So, he went online, searched for jobs fifty miles or more away, and applied to ten the first day. Then another ten. And, before the week was out, he heard back from Ray Butani, in a place called Schitt’s Creek. When he looked it up, he groaned at the population figure listed, but shrugged, and accepted Ray’s offer, because he wanted his new life to start as soon as possible. 

 

* * * * * 

 

His new life was pretty boring. He felt like a low-rent anthropologist, sitting in high grass, observing the natives, but never interacting, for fear he would become too attached. He should have known that wherever he went, there he was. And what he was, was boring. Apparently.

 

He first saw David at the cafe. It was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. Patrick had only been working for Ray about two weeks. Ray was shooting a particularly intense portrait session with a local woman and her four pomeranians. When the yapping got to be too much, Patrick slipped out and walked nearly a mile to the only restaurant in town. Almost no one was in the place. Patrick picked the corner booth, in case they got an unexpected rush. He’d spread a sheaf of real estate contracts across the table, and looked up when the bell over the door tinkled. 

 

He had a huge pair of sunglasses on, and a leather bag hung from his forearm. A crisp white collar peeked out from the top of his fuzzy black sweater, and he perched on a stool at the bar as he perused the menu.

 

Patrick wondered if this person was lost, he seemed so out of place, but then Twyla bounded over with a grin and said, “What can I get for you today, David?” And  wonder of wonders, this David smiled back at the waitress. It was more a wry twist of his lips, but it wasn’t disdain, it wasn’t dismissal. “Uh, well, I’m stymied for choice, as usual. Do you have any recommendations?”

 

Twyla nodded. “The tuna melt is my favorite for lunch, and we have some of the hash brown casserole left over from breakfast.”

 

David mused over her suggestions, then snapped the menu shut. “I’ll have the tuna melt, but could I get a side of fresh fruit, please?” Twyla wrote his order down on the pad in front of her, even though the next second she twisted around to shout “Tuna Melt!” at the kitchen. 

 

“Oh, could I get that to take away?” David asked.

 

“Sure thing, David!” Twyla ducked around the kitchen door to get his fruit.

 

Patrick was staring, and slunk down in the booth, hugging the corner a bit, in case David looked over his shoulder at the almost empty dining room. He needn’t have worried; David unlocked his phone and started scrolling, not looking up until Twyla handed him his box. When he went to pay, Twyla winked and said, “Your tab was reopened; we’ll settle up later.” 

 

His wry smile widened and when he left a moment later, Patrick sat up in his booth, twisting to follow David with his eyes until he couldn’t see him anymore. 

 

Have you ever had that feeling, when you see someone and just from how they carry themselves and move through the world, you want to talk to them, to find out more about them? Patrick just had, for the first time in . . . maybe ever.

 

* * * * *

 

Patrick felt pathetic when he thought about how often that scene from the cafe played in his mind over the next few days. He didn’t trust himself to sound detached enough, so he didn’t ask Ray who David was, either.

 

Ray wasn’t on the town council anymore, so Patrick didn’t hear about Moira, but he did see her one afternoon, clomping along Main Street in a pair of ridiculous black suede clogs. There was something about her outfit that had Patrick overlaying the image of David in his stark black and white outfit over her dress that looked like Carrera marble with silver zippers slashing across it at various angles. He felt a nameless pang at her retreating figure, but didn’t examine why.

 

At the end of a month, he found himself wondering if he should just pack it in and go back to Brampton. He wouldn’t go back to Rachel, but he had a decent circle of friends in his old life. Maybe he could get his old job at the accounting firm back. He was mulling over this plan, when Ray dropped a lease form on his desk. “Can you take a look at this? I’ve got to go to Elmdale to measure a closet.”

 

“Sure thing. What am I looking for?”

 

“Just want to make sure the lease agreement doesn’t have any obvious issues. When Christmas World fell through, I thought there would be riots in the streets. I’m not quite sure what David wants to do with the general store, but I want to make sure the lease is good for both of us.”

 

Hearing the name that had been rattling around his brain for two weeks, Patrick looked up, startled. Ray wasn’t paying attention; he was packing his measuring tape for his next venture. Patrick discovered after two days in the office that Ray was bored of real estate, but it was his bread and butter, and Patrick was here to take care of that side of things while his boss dabbled in more interesting business pursuits. 

 

“See you later!” Ray waved over his shoulder as he walked out the front door. 

 

Patrick nodded at Ray’s retreating form, then looks down at the papers.

 

David.

 

David Rose.

 

Party of the Second Part.

 

There wasn’t a business name or any details listed, just a general “retail store” written in the business description.

 

He was reading it over again, when Ray popped his head back in the door. “Oh, forgot to say, David made an appointment to file his incorporation papers tomorrow, but I’ll be shooting the Zhangs, so can you deal with it?”

 

Patrick nodded again, a slow smile blooming on his face.

 

* * * * *

 

This story of him meeting David IS his coming out story. It’s him realizing who he’s attracted to, and finally letting himself be attracted to the person whose magnetism he can’t deny. 

 

That near disaster of a first date, which David hadn’t even considered COULD be a date. Later, David confided in the pitch dark of a moonless night, that he had secretly hoped it was a date, but thought that if he allowed himself to believe it, something would happen to mess it up. Hence, Stevie.

 

It was in the hallowed dark of Patrick’s bedroom that David revealed the breadth of his desire, which had only been hinted at before. Patrick got a clearer picture when he was faced with two of David’s exes at once, and learned that they had nearly been a ‘throuple’. In the shadows, David told him an abridged version of his sexual history and philosophy.

 

Patrick felt knocked off-balance for a moment, though he was lying down, arms full of his boyfriend. He could choose to be intimidated, ashamed of his whisker of experience. He could let this change how he behaved around David. He could become distrustful and anxious, wondering if he would ever be enough to satisfy someone with such an appetite for the new and unusual.

 

But, he heard his words to David echo back to himself. “You’ve got to trust.” That’s all he could do. He could trust the feelings that gave him the bravery to ask David to dinner. He could trust that David trusted him with this knowledge of who he was. He could let love be enough for as long as it was.


End file.
